


Contour

by herbailiwick



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Birthday, Depression, Episode: s04e19 Jump the Shark, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-20
Updated: 2015-08-20
Packaged: 2018-04-16 06:53:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4615545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/herbailiwick/pseuds/herbailiwick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Takes place between 4x19 and 4x20. Sam doesn’t usually drink Bobby’s whisky in the dark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Contour

Sam took another sip straight from the bottle, not even bothering to look up when the owner of the bottle (and the couch he was sitting on) began darkening the doorway, blocking the faint light that seemed so far away. Sam was thrown further into shadow, which felt nice. His life had felt a little too illuminated. He’d felt a little too...seen.

Bobby tried to stare him down, but considering how Sam wasn’t even looking up, and the fact it was pretty damn dark, he tried for another tactic. “Special occasion?”

“Only the specialist,” Sam mocked, mocking the occasion and not Bobby. He gestured with the bottle. “Have a seat. Share with me.”  


“How generous,” Bobby said with a roll of his eyes, but he did as Sam offered, taking the bottle almost more so Sam wouldn’t drink than to have a sip of his own. He did stop after one sip, not handing the bottle back. Somehow, he figured Sam wouldn’t ask for it, either.  


“Is this about your brother?” Sam stiffened next to him on the couch, and pulled away, leaving the cool air to fill the space between them.  


“I can’t believe we never even met him,” Sam spat.  


Bobby sighed, setting the bottle on the ground silently. “They didn’t exactly go easy on you either.”

“This wasn’t about him,” Sam admitted a little guiltily. “I mean, it might as well be, now. I wish it had been.”  


“Why, you feel selfish now?” Bobby teased but didn’t at the same time.  


In the almost-dark, Sam leaned his head against Bobby’s shoulder, the sudden weight surprising but nice, like the brothers’ unexpected visit had been.

“You’re still healing up,” Bobby murmured, remembering suddenly. The bandages on Sam’s forearms had been large and fresh and he’d been incredibly wary. He’d convinced Sam to help him dress them with some good salve. “You can be selfish if you want, after what that ghoul did to ya.”  


“I’m almost 26.”  


“So there’s an age limit to feeling bitter? News to me,” Bobby rested his head against Sam’s, inhaling slightly. His hair smelled good. It usually did. He’d let Bobby help wash it, actually, which had become a failed experiment until Dean had shaken his head and taken over, cracking jokes all the while. Bobby’d only ever had short hair, and he’d never had a kid either, so it wasn’t exactly a humiliating defeat, but at least he’d gotten to try. 

Sam had been cute and a little grumpy, sitting by the sink. He’d been that warm sort of grumpy, ratty towel thrown around his shoulders to protect a shirt he didn’t even mind getting bloody in the line of work, cheeks a little pink from the attentions of his secret lover, then from his obnoxious brother.

“No. Not, ‘I’m almost 26,’ like I can’t be selfish or hold a grudge, Bobby. ‘I’m almost 26.’ That’s it. That’s what’s bothering me.”  


“Boo hoo, Sam,” Bobby snorted. Bobby was way older than that, but he wasn’t complaining. His bones were starting to creak and everything.  


Sighing, Sam reached in front of Bobby to hold him in a sort of half-hug. “No,” he said. “Bobby, I’m not fucking around.”

Bobby’s arm shot out and curled around Sam, holding him a little closer. “Okay, tough guy. What’s that supposed to mean, then?”

“I hate what we do.” That wasn’t news. “I hate all this. I left school after...you know, but, in another life, I could be working cases _my_  way, in a court room.”  


“ _Oh_. You’re 26.” Bobby finally gets it. It was the feeling of not having done enough. He hadn’t had that problem at Sam’s age, but he’d had it after Karen, and then he’d had it ever since he’d started becoming a hunter himself. A personal standard that could never be met.  


“School was...a lifetime ago.”  


“Yeah. It was,” Bobby agreed.  


“I’m not done, in my mind. I _am_ , but I’m not. Even if I tried to go back now, I’d never make it. I’m...broken. Broken down, murdery. A felon, with not enough qualms to even...call myself lawful anymore.”  


“Yeah, you are,” Bobby agreed.  


“There’s no way out.”  


“You still want there to be?”  


“Yes.”  


Bobby tried to imagine Sam in a court room, standing up for someone’s side in something. He could see it in his mind’s eye. He could believe in a lawyer like Sam to win.

“You’d be a good student even if you went back when you were _seventy_ -six. Stop whinin’.” He nudged Sam’s socked foot with his own.   


“Lawyer at 76?” Sam asked, voice stilted but a willingness to laugh at a joke there in the tone all the same, provided the joke seemed to demand a response.  


“Or senator. Or, hell, doctor.”  


Sam shoved him slightly, sitting up. “Shut up,” he said. Maybe it just sounded too ludicrous to entertain, even as a joke. 

“You’re gonna be 26,” said Bobby. “And then you’re gonna be 36 before you know it. You might not accomplish much. I sure as hell never did. But it’s life, and each day spent _livin’_  is better than not doing it. Or so they tell me.”  


Sam slunk away, getting up. He stretched a little, silhouetted and 6 foot 4. “Whoever ‘they’ are. I don’t think I can do this.”

“What, this birthday?”  


“Yeah,” Sam nodded, still just a black, Sam-shaped mass vaguely shifting in the light that no longer suited either of them.  


“Yes you can. You’ve fought off this kind of darkness before. You’re good at it.”  


“I’m not good at anything,” Sam replied. He bent down to snag the bottle from the dark. Bobby let him, watching the Sam shape as it moved closer to the light and gained color, pausing for only a moment before Sam was gone again and his footsteps could be heard on the stairs.  


“You’re good at not killing yourself,” Bobby told the empty room, or, well, the empty ceiling, or the floor above it, or the kid making it creak. He’d pull him aside so they could talk again before he and Dean left. It’d probably help.  


“I hope she’s bein’ good to you,” he murmured at the closed door to the brothers’ room. Hopefully, she was giving him enough of a push to keep him going and keeping his fears from setting him back. Hopefully, for her sake, she was treating him well. If she wasn’t, one of them would get her and take her down. It would only be a matter of time.  


Comforted by that thought, Bobby went back to bed, imagining what sort of stuff he’d get for Sam if they were more traditional, if Sam even believed in birthdays. There were too many possibilities for him to arrive at a clear answer before he fell into a heavy rest.


End file.
